Friday, October 26, 2007

Potemkin Government

Love it. It was only a matter of time.

Tuesday the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it was holding a news conference to answer reporters' questions about the federal agency's emergency response to the Southern California wildfires.

The agency gave reporters just 15 minutes notice to attend, and those members of the media who called in via phone lines could listen to the event but were not able to ask questions.

....

The event went smoothly. That is, until the news media discovered that the press conference wasn't exactly a press conference at all.

....

No reporters? No problem for FEMA. The agency filled the press room with its own public affairs personnel who asked questions.

It looked real enough for cable networks to briefly air the live event.

"I'll be glad to take some of your questions," Johnson said.

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" one staffer asked.

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson replied.

And so it went for more than 10 minutes, without any journalists.


Even as the White House feigns indignation, you know they're trying to find a way to do this with everything. Saves a lot of trouble giving the same non-answer to pesky questions. Heckuva job, Harvey.

5 comments:

  1. remember when Jeff Gannon got caught? that was only because he had a soliciting website..

    just think how many times this has been done, when no-one noticed enough to report on it.

    implies why the traditional press has failed the truth so..

    BTW, Talon News is back online.

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  2. Yeah, good point. Actually, Gannon only came up on people's radar initially because someone noticed that his gentle softballs were plagiarized.

    I still think that's one of the most under-investigated scandals of this administration and its relationship with the media, how a male prostitute can get day passes for over two years, function as an open shill for the administration, and have much of his (ahem) comings and goings be redacted or removed from the Secret Service log.

    That's some kind of access. Guckert must be able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, or else he knows where all the bodies (figuratively speaking, of course) are buried.

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  3. The Talon link seems to be inoperable (and I cross-checked it via search engine).

    According to Wikipedia, the site was revived in June, but "The current ownership of Talon News is not specified on the site. It is a spoof site, and is not connected to Robert Eberle or Jeff Gannon in any way."

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  4. Circling the wagons or circle jerk? Only the Shrub knows for sure.

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  5. "Hayward from Escondido wrote this:

    We drove by a huge wall of flames in our Hummer. Thank God we made it out." Chyron:

    Email From: Hayward Ablohmie
    Escondido, California

    Hey, I heard you were in Cali...

    ReplyDelete